Pamoja Faculty

Professor Anne Donohue is an award-winning public radio producer and editor. She was the special projects editor at Monitor Radio for five years, and has also been a contributor to NPR, the BBC, WGBH, WBUR and other public radio programs, winning the prestigious duPont-Columbia Award for The DNA Files on NPR. She has a special interest in international news, politics, and health and has reported from China, Egypt, Japan, Indonesia, Kenya and throughout the United States. She has won numerous journalism awards for productions on women and AIDS, population and women’s reproductive health, and treatment of women and girls in the developing world. Prior to her work in public radio, Donohue was a writer and producer in commercial television news at ABC News in Washington and the CBS affiliate in Boston. In 2008, Donohue was a Fulbright Scholar in Beijing, teaching journalism at Renmin (People’s) University. Donohue remained in Beijing and filed radio reports for several public radio outlets during the run up to the Olympics as well as NBC News during the Olympics. She is the author of a chapter in From Home to Homeland, published in 2010.

Jennifer Beard, PhD, MA, MPH, has been working in the field of international public health for approximately eight years. Dr. Beard is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, where she directs the writing program and teaches courses in professional and scientific writing. Her research interests include the health and well-being of orphans and vulnerable children in low- and middle-income countries, the social impacts of HIV/AIDS, and human resource-capacity strengthening. Her most recent work looks at the children of sex workers, drug users, and men who have sex with men in low- and middle-income countries. She has co-authored academic articles for publication on the household welfare of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in South Africa, sexual risk behaviors of migrant workers in China, and a literature review on the non-clinical impacts of antiretroviral therapy on quality of life and labor productivity in developing countries. Dr. Beard is currently working with nongovernmental organizations in Ukraine, Vietnam, and Zambia to document services they are providing to the children of sex workers and drug users. In addition, she is the principal investigator of an evaluation project assessing the social impact of the Pfizer Global Health Fellows program. She completed a PhD in English Literature in 1998 at the University of New Hampshire after receiving an MA from Ohio University in 1991; she received her MPH from BUSPH in 2006. Though her current work is focused on international health, she remains a devoted reader of Victorian novels and is convinced that many of her current research interests have their roots in her passion for Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters.

As a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Elizabeth Mehren wrote news, feature and magazine stories about events ranging from presidential politics to the Roman Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal to the Olympic Games and the Academy Awards.
Mehren worked for the paper in California, covering state and regional news. As a member of the paper’s Washington bureau, she wrote about politics and the White House. In New York, she pioneered the paper’s publishing beat and also produced feature and hard-news stories. For 15 years she served as New England bureau chief, reporting from a six-state region. Mehren previously served as a reporter and news editor at the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune and the Hayward (California) Daily Review. She has written for many national magazines. Mehren is the author of After the Darkest Hour (Simon & Schuster) and Born Too Soon (Doubleday/Kensington Books), which was made into a television movie. She is the co-author of Overcoming Infertility. Professor Mehren also has had extensive experience in radio and television, appearing on The Today Show, Fox News, CNN and elsewhere. She has won several national awards and was a fellow at the University of Maryland’s Casey Journalism Center, as well as a visiting scholar at the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism.

Dr. Monica Onyango has over 25 years experience in health care delivery and management. At the Department of International Health she teaches courses in managing disasters and complex humanitarian emergencies, sexual and reproductive health in disaster settings. Her experience includes Kenya Ministry of Health for ten years as a nursing officer in management positions at two hospitals and as a lecturer at the Nairobi’s Medical Training College, School of Nursing. From 1992 to 1998, Dr. Onyango worked as a health team leader with international non-governmental organizations in relief and development in South Sudan, Angola and a refugee camp in Kenya. In South Sudan and Angola, she facilitated the design and implementation of community based health services where there had been no services for several years. At Kakuma refugee camp in North Western Kenya, she helped design the maternal and child health programs for over 20,000 refugees. In 2008 and 2009, Dr. Onyango participated in providing training for South Sudanese health workers on emergency obstetrics and neonatal care. Her current research interests focus on reproductive health, maternal and child health, HIV/AIDS, health care among populations affected by disasters and the role of nurse midwives in improving maternal and child health. She holds a PhD in Nursing from Boston College, a Master of Science (nursing) degree from Boston College, a Master in Public Health degree from Boston University School of Public Health, Diploma in Advanced Nursing from Nairobi University, Diploma in general nursing and midwifery from Kenya Medical Training College, Nairobi.

Professor Oduke is a philosopher, theologian, and social activist. Like most African Scholars he is a polyglot, who has lived, worked, and studied in several countries of Africa, Asia, and North America. Because of his encounters with the religions and cultures of Africa, India, Arab-North Africa, Europe, and the Americas he refers to himself as a global citizen, a member of cosmopolis. As a social activist he has championed the rights of women and created economic opportunities for the poor and marginalized. His students and some of his colleagues call him “Prof” and at times “Daktari,” many people address him by his religious title, “Father” (for he is a Catholic Priest), his adoring nieces and nephews call him Uncle Father, and to his friends and close associates he prefers they call him Charles, Charlie or Onyi.

Before joining the faculty of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga University of Science and Technology (JOOUST), he was a Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. His scholarship and research has prepared him to offer courses in History of Western Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Systematic Theology, Indology, African Philosophy, Social Ethics, Media Ethics, Hermeneutics, History of Christianity, Phenomenology of Religion, and Philosophy of Religion. His specialization is in the thought of Bernard Lonergan, the Canadian Jesuit Philosopher-theologian-economist. In the early 1990s he was among the first to create an internet hub in Nairobi that provided connectivity to several Jesuit and faith-based institutions in East Africa. In 2006 he teamed with two other social entrepreneurs to set up the first V-SAT connectivity and digital hub in Bondo and Siaya County in response to the need for bridging the rural digital divide in rural Nyanza. In 2007 he facilitated the logistics of delivering distance on line graduate programs between Regis University, Colorado and what was then Loreto College, Kenya. The first cohort completed the program successfully in 2009 and is now heading information technology and computer science departments in several Kenyan universities. Prof. Oduke has shown leadership in creating local digital content and digital repositories in Kenya. The PamojaTogether Student Foreign Aid News Network is his most recent effort to create local content and document the experience and perspectives of Kenyan communities and individuals whose lives have been touched by both local and international development aid.